July 24, 2012 - The Telegraph has reported (emphasis added), "fighter jets have reportedly launched bomb attacks on Syria's second city of Aleppo, which, if confirmed, would be the first time Assad forces had used war planes against citizens."

Image: A sole"tweet" from BBC's Ian Pannell, who has yet to
provide any source, evidence, or details regarding his vague claim,
immediately made headlines across the Western media.

....

The claim is based on a single "tweet" from BBC's Ian Pannell who, after
hours of making his his claim that, "fighter jets have bombed eastern
#Aleppo city. A significant escalation and perhaps the first time
they've been used in #Syrian conflict," has failed categorically to cite
his source, provide any evidence of his claims, or provide details of
the targets and context of the attacks, if indeed they took place. Yet
the Western media "echo chamber"
began repeating the story seconds after it was posted, and through this
alone it attempted to validate the claim while building momentum behind
NATO insinuations.

Image: Taken from an official Defense Department transcript,
the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Admiral Michael Mullen
both concede they'd seen no confirmation "whatsoever" regarding claims
by the corporate media that Libya's Qaddafi had used airstrikes against
his own people. However, this fabrication would be used for very real
airstrikes, not by Qaddafi, but by NATO under the guise of the
"Responsibility to Protect."

....

Narratives of "brutal dictators" bombing civilians with aircraft have
been used before, most notably in Libya where verified lies were told
regarding Qaddafi's use of aircraft against the city of Benghazi. These
fabrications were used to justify foreign military intervention and
regime change under the guise of a "no-fly zone" to "protect civilians."

The Syrian military cannot, however, rule out the use of airstrikes
considering the overt manner in which foreign interests such as the US, Israel, and the Gulf States
are increasingly sending heavily armed militants over their borders to
destabilize their nation. It must be taken into consideration that FSA
militants have been conducting indiscriminate bombings
across Syria for months now, and with their latest assassinations and
offensive, have shed the ability to play to role of "victim-civilians."

Image: The West's "lightly armed" FSA. ABC (Australia) claims
this is a picture taken this week of an FSA-seized tank on the
outskirts of Aleppo, Syria. One wonders if this tank was rolling along
the outskirts of Washington in the middle of a war, whether or not the
US would use airstrikes to neutralize it.

....

The West has eagerly described this violence in Syria as a "civil war,"
yet has conveniently continued to depict their heavily armed,
foreign-backed fighters streaming across Syria's borders as "citizens"
and "civilians," even as their ties to Al Qaeda and other foreign
militant groups become ever more apparent. In fact, Iraqi officials are already linking
the recent bombings in their country by Al Qaeda to the same forces and
backers of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) in Syria.

Image: Al Jazeera
was running this picture along with the description, "Syrian rebels
near Aleppo city, as they took much of the formerly loyalist city from
the government [EPA]." Heavy weapons can be seen mounted on several of
the trucks, and images like this are increasingly common as militants
attempt to enter cities like Damascus and Aleppo where there are more
cameras, and hiding these weapons from the general public becomes
increasingly difficult.

Between lies revolving around distorted statements regarding chemical
weapons, fabricated atrocities, and now claims of airstrikes being used
upon "civilian populations," the West is desperately running down the
list for a "casus belli" that will stick. The Syrian government, after a
year and a half of being undermined by foreign interests and hordes of
foreign militants, has maintained both the faith and trust the majority
of its population has put into it. If it is deploying airstrikes, it can
be assured they are doing so with keeping that faith and trust intact -
and as the West often claims in the midst of its military adventures,
doing so to minimize as much as possible collateral damage.

Recent attacks by the FSA have aimed at undermining that faith and truth, and militants in the northern city of Aleppo have purposefully moved to the commercial center of the city
to draw in the heavy weapons necessary to neutralize them. While the
Western press portrays this move toward the center of Aleppo as
"progress," it should be noted that the Syrian military operates out of
bases on the city's outskirts.

This means the further militants push toward the center of the city, the
further from engaging the military directly they become. While the FSA
claims they are "liberating" Aleppo, even the Western media concedes it is a bastion of government support.
This indicates that terrorism, intimidation, and panic, not
"liberation" are the FSA's goals in Aleppo, and that the government is
justified to take any measures necessary to stop them.

Conversely, NATO and its allies see Syria's vigorous defense
capabilities as an obstacle to Western-planned regime change - therefore
if neutralizing them through covert means is not possible, they will
attempt to neutralize them by declaring them a threat to "civilians,"
invoking "Responsibility to Protect," and initiating foreign military
intervention.

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